Do you remember how mucky Sheffield was before the clean air act?

[CHAIRBOY]

I can remember coming back from Doncaster races at the final Flat meeting in November during the 60's, on the SUT coach, which in those days came through Conisborough and Templeborough etc past the bottom of Staniforth Road, and it was very murky and often foggy. If you came in on the train, there was a similar backcloth as you passed Rotherham Masborough and Attercliffe Road stations, with company chimneys belching out smoke.

[Janner]

i lived in Sheffield in the 30's & 40's it was so dirty housewives would rush to pick in their washing when it rained because the rain was so dirty. In the 50's when I was in Plymouth my mother came to visit & was astounded to see washing placed on hedges & grass to dry.

[parsleydiva]

I remember the very thick fogs we had to walk in to and from school sometimes - it was awful and frightening too as you could not see in front of you. I hated them.

[Lostrider]

I used to got to work on the 41 bus. When it turned off City Road to go down Granville road, not only could you not see Crosspool, Broomhill etc as you can today, you couldn't even see the bottom of Granville Road.:-)

[Texas]

A clean white shirt lasted about five minutes. And here's a word for the sayings and rhymes thread. The collar got 'grufted.'

[Texas]

No matter how clean your neck was. (Afterthought).

[Greybeard]

No matter how clean your neck was. (Afterthought).

 

But to be fair your neck stayed clean about as long as the shirt collar did

[cat631]

Does anyone know what caused the thick orange smoke that came out of the enormous brick chimnies of English Steel at Brightside? This would have been in the late fifties.

[Texas]

I understood it to be the result of cleaning the furnaces, at least that's what I was told.

[Vasquez Rich]

My late Mum told me this story. She was from London originally and met my Dad in the forces. When they hooked up and she finally came to Sheffield, they arrived by train at Midland Station and she told me that they came out from the station and she looked up... and could not see the sky! Would be 1947/48 ish I guess.